P. Utilities and Services
The Charlevoix Rough and Ready Fire Department No. 1 stands beside the town hall/county building in the 1890s and behind Charlevoix’s first fire engine, nicknamed “Little Silsby.” The middle of the three towers was used to suspend hoses for drying after a fire so they wouldn’t rot. On September 1, 1921 Ernest Hemingway walked into this building to sign an affidavit and obtain a license for marriage to his first wife Hadley Richardson. The original documents showing Hemingway’s signature are on display at the Charlevoix Historical Society’s Harsha House Museum.
The Charlevoix Fire Department early in the first decade of the 20th century. Only four have been identified. Top left: C. Y. Marshall, whose father Hank had once been fire chief. Bottom left: Meyer Levinson. Top right: William Bellinger. Bottom right: Meyer Cohen.
The Charlevoix City Hall at Mason and State Streets, constructed in 1939. The Baptist Church appears at left, replaced by the current fire hall, which used to be a small two-bay wing with an apartment on top in back of City Hall. The City Council meeting room was originally on the ground floor at left. A major renovation in 2005-2006 moved it to the top floor right.
Charlevoix’s third electric power plant was built in the 1930s on Ferry Avenue near Stover Road. It provided some of the town’s power until it was destroyed by fire in April, 1993. Now Charlevoix’s power is imported.
Charlevoix’s first hospital was on the northwest corner of Grant and West Hurlbut Streets. It served from 1920 to 1954 when the present hospital was constructed just outside of town on the Lake Michigan Shore next to Earl Young’s Boulder Park, and is now an apartment house.
The former fish hatchery, Charlevoix’s second, was built in 1917 at the base of Grant Street near the channel and Lake Michigan Beach. The first hatchery was a small house-like structure that stood next door. This larger building was put up for the Federal government’s Bureau of Sports Fisheries and Wildlife with a fifty-year lease. But in 1965, with more up-to-date hatchery facilities built elsewhere, the property reverted to the city which then leased the building to the Michigan Conservation Department, now the Department of Natural Resources, for a Great Lakes Fisheries research station.
Charlevoix’s imposing Carnegie Free Library stood at the northwest corner of State and Clinton Streets. Its cornerstone was laid in 1909 and the building served the community for almost fifty years, being vacated in 1967 and torn down to make way for the Charlevoix State Bank in 1968. City Council met in its basement until the construction of City Hall in 1939.